Avery Thomas

Web Developer

About Me

I live in Austin, TX and work as a web developer at Keller Williams Realty International. In addition to my job, I am currently doing some freelance and pro-bono work as well as a few personal projects to improve skills and explore new things.

Through my education and career opportunities, I have developed a passion for storytelling in a variety of ways. I love hearing people talk about personal experiences AND analyzing data to find the story in the numbers. Web development has provided a great way for me to explore different mediums of storytelling by using code to cultivate a unique experience with every project.

Want to know more about my work experience? Download a copy of my resume or get in touch:

Recent

Performance Report | Outfront Magazine

Keller Williams Realty, Inc. | Spring 2019

2018 was a year with a lot of changes and exciting momentum at Keller Williams Realty, Inc, which the marketing team wanted to highlight in a data-driven story. I used D3.js to generate a graph that displays the growth in shared profits and a map that plots the growth in offices over time. One month after its publication, this story has seen 14,021 page views with a 6.5% click through rate on the final CTA and an average of 2:00 minutes on the page.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other KWRI team members.

Skills Used:

KW MAPS Coaching

Keller Williams Realty, Inc. | Winter 2018

KW MAPS Coaching is a business coaching and training company within Keller Williams Realty, Inc. This site is a custom WordPress theme built from scratch with 25 template types. One of the more complex functionalities can be found on the Coaching Programs page, which contains a questionnaire that sorts the different coaching programs based on user preferences. After building this latest iteration of the site, it has seen a 27% increase in the users in its first 4 months.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other KWRI team members.

Skills Used:

Title IX

Personal Project | Fall 2018

With data on Title IX cases from The Chronicle of Higher Education, I used D3.js along with JQuery to sort through the data by state to show which states had the most cases, most resolved cases and most active cases. After clicking a state, you can see the data broken down by university and then clicking a university draws a bar graph of that school's stats on Title IX cases.

All data is from The Chronicle of Higher Educations's Title IX API, tracking sexual assault allegations on college campuses since April 4, 2011.

Skills Used:

Outfront Magazine

Keller Williams Realty, Inc. | Fall 2018

Outfront is a magazine published by the Keller Williams Realty, Inc. that shares the stories of Keller Williams agents from around the globe. I collaborated with the magazine team and a web designer to bring the magazine to life online. The WordPress theme is built from scratch and optimized for SEO to allow the site to grow as more issues are published in print and online. Since the site's launch in October, it has had over 111,000 page views.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other KWRI team members.

Skills Used:

Juggernaut Wine

BFG | Spring 2018

For this project, I served as the primary developer, so I was responsible for all aspects of development. One of the largest challenges was the section with the video towards the bottom of the home page because the posterframe of the video needed to scale responsively but also lineup with the background image. I was also able to have some creative freedom in creating unique hover states for the buttons seen. The website is integrated with WordPress as a CMS.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other BFG team members.

Skills Used:

Historic Hurricane Season

Personal Project | Winter 2017

After moving to the coast of South Carolina, I have paid close attention to the weather during hurricane season. This season had a lot of activity so I researched, wrote and created data visuals to see how the season compared to season's in the past. I used Highcharts JS to create bar graphs and line graphs and Highmaps JS to create an SVG graphic showing rainfall in Texas counties. Additionally, I mapped all of the storm paths for the season using Google Maps API.

Skills Used:

Molloy Kaye Retail

Freelance | Winter 2017

I both did the design and development on this website for Molloy Kaye Retail. It features all of their listings, which can be easily managed between "Available," "Under Contract" and "Closed" statuses from the CMS (WordPress). This project involved a few iterations of design created while meeting with the client about other retail websites they liked. In the end the client was very pleased with the website and the ease with which they can use the CMS.

Skills Used:

Affresh

BFG | Fall 2017

My first project with Affresh at BFG was a single page site advertising their washing machine cleaners and wipes in the summer of 2016. This fall, we have rebuilt and launched their new company website and are currently working towards adding translations and e-commerce to the website. I was responsible for the front end development of the category pages and single product pages as well as the CMS integration of the single product pages.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other BFG team members.

Skills Used:

Off The Coast of the Carolinas

Personal Project | Spring 2017

News about a local shark fisherman tagging great white sharks in South Carolina caught my attention, so I reached out to him about an interview. I created this site for a multimedia storytelling experience that has video, photos, and text. This project was a lot of fun because it allowed me to not only work through some development challenges, but also gave me the opportunity to do some videography and photography as well.

Skills Used:

Sutter Home Wines

BFG | Spring 2017

For the initial development phase of this new website for Sutter Home, I did the front end development for the "Family of Wines" page and the individual wine landing pages. After it was integrated with WordPress and the final data was imported, I was responsible for a pre-launch quality assurance pass. Since it's launch, I have been involved in multiple maintenance updates to improve functionality after post-launch user testing.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other BFG team members.

Skills Used:

Executive Orders

Personal Project | Spring 2017

All of the news about President Donald Trump's executive orders in his first weeks in office caught my attention. Using data from the Federal Register's API (which I accessed via AngularJS), I created this website to view the number of executive orders signed not only by Donald Trump, but 3 of his most recent predecessors to see if his activity in his first 100 days in office is standard or if it deviates from tradition.

Skills Used:

Travel Photography Blog

Personal Project | Spring 2017

Photography is one of my favorite hobbies, especially when I have the opportunity to travel. I designed and developed this theme for a travel photography blog as a digital scrapbook that I could share with family and friends. For each location, it displays a map of where the photos were taken. I also added in some customization settings to the theme, like the ability to change out the colors and logos.

Skills Used:

Colorandstory

Freelance | Winter 2016

For this project, my only role was development. The design was completed by Christopher Scott of colorandstory. I took the design and created a custom Wordpress theme with custom post types so that he could create project pages with a variety layouts.

Skills Used:

BFG

BFG | Winter 2016

For this project, I worked closely with the creative team to convert a non-responsive site in Expression Engine to a fully responsive website with Wordpress as the CMS. This required a lot of collaboration, because we did not have a full redesign and the team wanted to maintain as much of the strucure and layout as possible. Our team decided to use a 'headless' Wordpress for this project and access all data via the Rest API. I was responsible for the front end development and CMS integration for this website.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other BFG team members.

Skills Used:

Trucker Territory

BFG | Spring 2016

Trucker Territory is a blog catered to truckers sponsored by Progressive Commercial. For the initial phase of the website, I did some front end development. However as the project grew to include music, podcasts and sweepstakes, I took on the responsibilities of the front end development as well as integrating it with WordPress.

My primary role for this project was web developer. All creative and content is the product of other BFG team members.

Skills Used:

Go Golf

UNC Chapel Hill | Spring 2015

Go Golf was a concept developed as part of a group project as a way for golfers to share information about different courses while traveling. My efforts were focused on setting up the models, creating the views and urls as well as setting the structure for the HTML templates. I also did a majority of the design and CSS. I deployed the site using PythonAnywhere and the files are accessible via my GitHub account.

Skills Used:

Engineering Occupations

UNC Chapel Hill | Fall 2014

Using data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics in a JSON file, I used JavaScript to take the index value of the selected job title in order to get the cooresponding data. The chart was created using Highcharts.